Astros' Carlos Correa grinding through career-worst slump

1of 163PHOTOS: Astros game-by-game
Houston Astros' Carlos Correa watches against the Detroit Tigers in the fifth inning of a baseball game in Detroit, Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2018. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Browse through the photos to see how the Astros have fared in each game this season.Photo: Paul Sancya/Associated Press

The problems plaguing Carlos Correa at the plate are plentiful. His hands are out of whack. Pitch recognition is suffering. The worst slump of Correa's three-year career continues to spiral, leaving the Astros' perpetually positive shortstop seeking answers.

"Going out there is no fun when you're not playing the way you expected to be playing," Correa said Friday. "But at the same time, I'm putting in the work and putting in the time for me to fix this and I can't get frustrated or quit. I just have to keep grinding and try to figure it out."

Correa's suffered two injuries this season. An oblique issue in June required he miss four games. Lower back soreness sent him to the disabled list later that month. He was activated on Aug. 10.

Correa acknowledged before Friday's opener against the Diamondbacks that his swing is "not the same." He assigned blame to the oblique — not the back — and "playing hurt" with it early in June.

"The way my hands are attacking the baseball (is off)," Correa said. "I'm a little around the baseball. It's been hard to fix it as of now, some of the habits I acquired when I was playing hurt and trying to compensate so my oblique wouldn't hurt. I was going around the baseball instead of staying inside because that was hurting me. Those bad habits have been really hard to break."

Entering Friday, Correa possessed a 22.3 percent strikeout rate since returning from the disabled list. He has just three extra-base hits and a .459 OPS. He's moved to fifth in manager A.J. Hinch's batting order in the last week.

"They can be fixed, you know, overnight," Correa said of his swing flaws. "It's just a matter of a couple balls dropping here and there and gaining confidence back and go from there."

Asked to assess Correa's swing since his return, Hinch found fault with the shortstop's rhythm and timing.

The "number one priority" for Correa, according to Hinch, is to "see the ball and recognize pitches."

"If he's not doing that, then it's going to be really hard to hit, regardless of your hitting mechanics or rhythm and timing," Hinch said. "Once you identify that you're looking at pitches then you can kind of move to the mechanics."

"When I say he's one click away, I mean it," the manager added. "And when it happens, and it's going to happen, he's right back in the middle of everything that we're doing right."

Chandler Rome joined the Houston Chronicle in 2018 to cover the Astros after spending one year in Tuscaloosa covering Alabama football — during which Nick Saban asked if he attended college. He did, at LSU, where he covered the Tigers baseball team for nearly four years. He covered most of the Astros' 2015 playoff run, too, as an intern for MLB.com

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